Martial Law Update

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(See today’s earlier post below.)  I walked the neighborhood loop this noon, and everything looked normal.  The only soldiers I saw were two positioned in front of our corner police station with their M16s.  They looked uncomfortable in the heat. 

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As a voluntaryist libertarian, it is a repugnant experience for me to witness the military seizing absolute police power, even if temporarily.  If we really must kneel down and have any government (with its policing power) to lord over us at all, usually an elected one is better than an unelected one.  Democratically elected governments often -- but do not always -- shuffle the better of the wolves to the top of the pathetic power heap.  That doesn’t seem to work here in Thailand where a weak constitution allows majority-elected wolves to be rampant loose-cannon despots who think they have the mandate to plunder what they can and punish whomever they oppose. 

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As F.A. Hayek pointed out, when immense power is constitutionally available, the worst of the wolves get on top.  If the constitution severely limits power, then the wolves are not interested; they will turn back to their underground Mafioso ways. 

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What is the lesser of the many political evils today in Thailand?  The Thaksinista regime wants a tyranny of the majority with a mandate to do anything they please.  Suthep and his anti-government legions want an ill-defined “reform” under unnamed unelected authorities.  Neither side will budge from their dogmatic (and equally special-interest) positions.  And the country is divided behind them. 

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A lot of folks here are relieved that the Royal Thai Army has stepped in to stop the building cycle of violence (if they indeed can stop it).  This seems to be somewhat true of both sides of the political divide, since things are at an absolute impasse. 

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The Army’s seizure of power through martial law – which they insist is only temporary – has an analogue in the ancient Roman Republic, where a Roman citizen was appointed as temporary military “dictator” in special emergencies and only for the duration of that emergency, after which he would stand down and give political power back to the Roman citizens.  (I am not excusing it.  I’m merely pointing out the Roman Republic, with some of its constitutional restraints, was infinitely better than the following Roman Empire that crushed all liberty.) 

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But who appointed Army Commander-in-chief General Prayuth as dictator here?  (Well, he did, with the might of the military as his strongest backup argument.)  Will he return power to civilians after he has the two sides talk it out?  History says that the Thai military usually does so after things shake out, and few think that Prayuth has the ambition for further power in the future.  But times are a-changing and the “old ways” are not as satisfying to a modern citizenry who has heard of more peaceful means.  The Army is not going to be able to pull this one off many more times. 

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General Prayuth is a royalist conservative, so the Red Shirt Thaksinistas do not trust him.  They demand that he treat all sides in the conflict fairly and equally if there is to be any negotiated reconciliation.  The Reds have complained of being victims of “double standards” and unequal treatment in the past from the courts and the entrenched elite power structure, and they have a very valid point.  The doctrine of the Rule of Law, from Hammurabi to Moses to Cicero, Locke and Jefferson, has evolved to demand equal standards before the law.  For everyone. 

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As General Prayuth and the Army try to bring all sides together to hammer out a fair political solution, it is a historic opportunity for the Thai military to prove its worth as a respectable national institution.  But today, it’s the only game in town. 

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-Zenwind.

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